continue with nothing

In some sense, everybody believes that zero equals one.

For example, when attempting to imagine the beginning of the universe, the begining of everything, what choice do we have other than to say "something came from nothing". Say we believe that the universe is however many billions of years old, what was it before that? Nothing. Even if it's twice as old, or a thousand times as old, there's still no explanation for what came before, other than nothing. Same thing if you believe in God and creation. What came before God? Nothing. Two choices: from nothing, came God, and from God came the universe, or, from nothing came the universe. In either case, 0 = 1 is isomorphic with this event and thinking process, and it's about time we admitted to it.

Some people may have retorted the logic of this by saying, "Well, I believe that God has always been there, or that the universe has always been here. Therefore I don't need to explain how something came from something because something has always been here." That may work, but if you believe that, then in essence you're now stuck in the dilemma of explaining where "nothing" came from. In order for something to have definition, it needs a border. Something and nothing are no different other than by perspective--negative space and positive space are only significant in the fact that they are different spaces, and have a border between them. If something has no border, it is no different from nothing because it can have no definition. When starting with nothing, it makes no difference if you define nothing as everything. In a way, it's just as effective at describing the beginning of everything as nothing is. If "something" has never changed, we might as well still be in the "nothing" phase of the universe, and "something" has yet to be created.

In both cases, we have to continue living knowing that what we have now has no outlines or borders--either it is no different from nothing, or it is nothing, zero equals one, one equals zero, and we have to continue living with the knowledge that there has never been a legitimate "thing" that came from another "thing".

You are not your parent's child, because if you thought you were you'd have to trace back your family tree all the way to the beginning and find the first parent, and explain where they came from. You may get tripped up near the beginning of humanity, but don't let that stop you, just take the next natural step: Adam came from God, or the first man came from an ape, and continue on either by explaining where God came from or where apes came from (and going all the way back to algae, hopping over into minerals, then star dust, then the Big Bang). Whatever the first thing is, it cannot have a parent. If the first thing doesn't have a parent, then it can't exist, or if it exists, its existence has no distinction from the lack of existence.

We are all in one big colorless room, hallucinating. Now dance.